


Samsara

by Poppelganger



Series: Playing Favorites [1]
Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempted Murder, Bad Decisions, Break Up, Buddhist Terminology, Depending On Your Definition of a Happy Ending, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Mental Breakdown, Obsession, POV Second Person, Past Relationship(s), Reader-Insert, Trains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 04:12:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1331470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poppelganger/pseuds/Poppelganger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While you're still struggling to get over your ex, Izaya Orihara barges into your life and thinks you should be dating him.  You do, with predictably disastrous results.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Unending Platform

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The entire work is inspired by a song of the same title, so I would like to recommend the koma'n piano cover of the song if you would like some music to accompany your reading, located here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1qnFwD8rco

Ikebukuro Station has seen every side of you.

It has seen you eager, disappointed, apathetic, idealistic, anxious and aggravated.  And now, as an undergraduate student in Toshima, you can add "heartbroken" to that list, four months since breaking up with your boyfriend of three years beneath the florescent lights.  It's poetic and tragic and ironic since that's where you met him for the first time, when you were both still in high school.  You would walk together every night and he would wait until the train came, and then he would let go of your hand slowly, one finger at a time, like he wanted to take one with him to remember you by.  He would wave until he couldn't see you anymore.

The break up was mutual, you reassure yourself on your way out the door in the morning.  It was what you both needed.  It was what you both wanted.  If you keep telling yourself that, you'll eventually believe it.

It used to bother you, but four months later, you're getting better, sliding back into a routine.  You leave early to avoid the morning rush, when the sky is still dark and only a few salary men are standing on the platform with you, checking their watches.  You get to campus and study, eat breakfast, and try to keep yourself occupied.  You go home at the end of the day, pressed into the train with a hundred other commuters all wanting to do the same thing.  You do homework, study, sleep, rinse, wash, repeat, every day.  Your friends think you need to get out more, but you know it'll pay off in the end.  You're normal, perfectly normal, too normal.

But there's nothing wrong with that, is there?

You never thought so before, but just as you're thinking those thoughts, reassuring yourself that normal is a fine thing to be, something abnormal takes note of you.  You don't notice anything out of the ordinary right away, but you notice that there is someone there, because he reminds you of your ex, standing there, waiting beside you at the crosswalk for the lights to change.  He has the same dark hair and the same sharp fashion sense, but maybe you're just imagining things and they look nothing alike.  Sometimes you lost yourself to the past.

He keeps pace with you when you step out onto the street, all the way down the block and into the local station, where he turns to face you as you both stand at the yellow line.  His smile is like any other you know, but soon it will be something very, very different.

"Have we met before?" he asks.  You shake your head and smile back, telling him no, you don't think so.  "Really?  I'm sure I've seen you before.  Maybe around here."

It's likely.  This is the station closest to your home, and also the one that your boyfriend surprised you at once, meeting you to spend an afternoon together.  You see his face in place of the stranger's and turn away to shake the image from your mind.  He doesn't say a word the rest of the way, and you leave the train for the platform at your stop, but your eyes meet for just a moment, and the stranger slowly smiles and waves as the doors close between you and the train pulls away.

*

He introduces himself to you as Izaya Orihara, and the only reason you don't turn and run then is because you don't know any better.  You have always been the bookish type, "most likely to stay in on a Saturday night," and it finally works against you when the suave terror of Ikebukuro barges into your life and gets cozy.  You run into each other every day and reason that you probably only notice him on your route now because you've finally gotten out of your rut and have begun again to appreciate the scenery, never once imagining that somebody might have just decided to start following you.

"You must be going to Toshima," he says, standing over you in the train.  It's the seventh day in a row that you've run into each other on your way to the station and ridden in the same car together.  The previous day, he told you that he worked in town, and you still believe it.  He hasn't done anything to make you believe otherwise, after all.

Yet.

Urged on by the friendly conversation, you tell him he's right and that you're an undergraduate student.  He seems interested.

"Is that right?" he asks, "An undergrad?  Maybe I guessed your age wrong."  You establish that you are twenty, and he is twenty-five.

An older man.  You have a thing for older men.  You tell yourself to stop staring.

When the train pulls up to your stop, he takes your hand to help you to your feet and it looks like he might kiss it, but he only lets you go.  Slowly.  One finger at a time.  Like he wants to take one with him to remember you by. Your nose burns and your face heats up and you mutter a quick, "see you," and turn on your heel to leave, waiting until you're safely on the train platform to wipe your eyes on your sleeve.

You're stuck in the train station of Samsara, a never-ending loop that seems to take you back to the same places every day where you see the same person and hear the same words and make the same mistakes.  The yellow line stretches on forever, the platform goes on as far as the eye can see, and there is no terminal stop.  You hope that Izaya will be able to destroy the cycle for you, but you could never ask that of him.  The task is yours, and you'll leave when you're ready.

Until then, you'll just keep walking, alone, miserably.

*

There's a six o'clock alarm that goes off on your phone every day that reminds you to eat.  Your boyfriend set it for you a few years ago after you let it slip that you hadn't eaten yet that day.  "This way, you won't forget to take a break for dinner," he'd said, "I'd take care of you if I was there, but we'll have to wait until we're out of high school to move in together.  So for now, take care of yourself."

When it goes off, you feel hungry, and you also feel a dull throbbing in your heart.  It wakes you up if you sleep, it brings you out of daydreams and back into reality, from the past to the present, reminding you that you are living today, not yesterday or a day a few years ago, and that things are different now.  

You're alone now.

One day, you're sitting on the train on your way home from an afternoon study session with some friends when Izaya boards the train.  "You're out later than usual," he notes.  This time, he sits next to you.  "Not that it's any of my business."

"It's fine," you say, "I was just studying with friends.  It does me some good to get out now and then."

He smiles at you.  This is not the smile of a stranger, but the kind of encouraging smile that someone who really knows you, knows what you're going through and where you've been, might give you.  You tear up at the sight and try to pretend you're stifling a cough.  "Actually," he says, "There's something I've been meaning to ask you."

Suddenly, you're on the train three years ago.  Your boyfriend--who is not your boyfriend yet--is sitting in the seat next to you, rubbing the back of his head nervously.  "It's sort of embarrassing," he admits, "I mean, we haven't known each other that long.  But I notice you, and I think about you a lot.  So I was wondering...if maybe you wanted to be my girlfriend?"

Your alarm goes off, and you don't catch your phone in time.  Izaya catches it, but you don't notice that at all.  You see him next to you, and that's all, not your ex, just Izaya.  The alarm keeps buzzing and you know you're crying when his apprehensive grin falls and turns into an expression of worry.  "Are you okay?" he asks, and you nod.

You are okay.  In fact, you're great.  It's three years later, and you think you've finally moved on. 

Ikebukuro Station is the silent witness to your hazy love-struck eyes and the sharp, clear ones of Izaya Orihara behind you, and it patiently awaits your world to inevitably come crashing down.


	2. The Dark Gray Line

Izaya is an information broker, the best in Ikebukuro, and you don't find out until after you start dating him.  You're not sure why he asked you out when he's so clearly married to the job, constantly at his computer or on the phone, selling dirty secrets to the highest bidder, and you're even more uncertain as to why you said yes.  It's your ex, probably, who Izaya kind of looks like if you stand next to him under the florescent lights of your train stop, because, as you realize within days of agreeing to go out with Izaya, you are not over your last relationship yet.

You don't think it's a rebound thing.  Izaya is good-looking and charming and smart and even though you don't really know much about him, and if you really weren't into him, you would've left already, right?

Especially at times like this, when you run into Izaya on the way back from a friend's house and he has blood on his shirt and a knife in his hand.  "Oh," he says, looking almost as surprised to see you as you are him.  You wait for him to say something else, but he never does.

"Are you okay?" you ask, though it's not the first question that comes to mind, definitely behind "What are you doing?" and "Whose blood is that?"

"I'm fine," he says, smiling as always.  He never isn't smiling, it seems.  You've never really seen him with anything else on his face besides a smile; nervous smiles, excited smiles, frustrated smiles--he communicates everything with a mask of happiness.  His gaze follows yours to the knife he's holding and he laughs, flicking it shut.  "Don't worry, that's not for you," he says, a mischievous light in his eyes, and you wonder if he has something that is, and if you want whatever that is.

*

You might not be well-versed in the language of gossip, but you start to hear Izaya's name around town now that you're listening for it.  He's known, well-known, infamous, some might say.  He has a reputation for ruining lives and having more fun than should be legal while doing so.  You entertain the idea of confronting him about it, but when he shows up at your house intending to escort you to his for dinner, you conveniently forget, because why rock the boat?

You go the station and stand behind the yellow line together.  Once, your boyfriend invited you for something similar, wanting to have a romantic dinner while his parents were out of town.  And it was wonderfully romantic, except for the part where he came over to your side of the table and started touching.  "Not right now," you'd said, apologetic, and he'd been offended at first.

"Don't be such an ice queen," were the words he'd said, and those words have stuck with you ever since.  An ice queen, he'd called you, and that wasn't the last time.  He always said that.  You were an ice queen.  You could be a cold, unfeeling, robot of a girlfriend at times.  You could figure distance and velocity and get into the top of the rankings, but you had no fucking clue in the bedroom.  

He apologized as soon as the words came out of his mouth.  "Sorry, sorry," a hug and a kiss on your cheek, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that."  

You push it to the back of your mind by the time you get to Izaya's.  His apartment is spacious and furnished with expensive-looking western furniture, and you're afraid to step on the floor and getting it dirty.  "Come in," he says, "Have a seat.  I'll make something."

"Let me help," you say, but he pushes you onto the couch with a playful smile.

"Maybe next time," he says with a wink and disappears into the kitchen.

*

Dinner is wonderful.

Izaya has it all--looks, brains, and talent as a master chef.  "Is it any good?" he asks, smiling anxiously, watching as you take your first bite of curry.  You can honestly say you haven't eaten something so good in a while, and you express your appreciation for dinner, but he modestly deflects all compliments.  "I just wanted to do something nice for you."

"Why?" you ask, "I'm grateful, really, but I haven't gotten to do much of anything for you."

"I just want to take care of you," he says, placing his hands over yours and looking into your eyes with concern.  "I think you forget to take care of yourself."

You know you've done this before.  You've sat here before and listened to these words before and been drawn in by these kinds of promises before.  No matter how hard you've fallen for Izaya, you sometimes still get confused, sometimes still see someone else's face and think of someone else's voice.  You make a conscious effort to fight that image and that time, and you remain in the present, in the apartment of your wonderful boyfriend Izaya Orihara who has just cooked dinner for you and is watching as you come back from your thoughts.

"You're right," you say, returning his smile, "Thank you for looking out for me."

Izaya smiles back, but that's not really so remarkable.  He's always smiling, after all.

*

On your way home from Izaya's, you stop at the convenience store.  You realize, as you wait for the train to come, that this is another station you recognize.  It's the one where you saw your boyfriend, your wonderful boyfriend, with one of the other girls in your class.  No matter how much of a bookworm, "stay-at-home" type you were, you knew what you were looking at as soon as you saw it.

They got off the train here together.  She was taller than you, and taller than him--an older woman, go figure--and she leaned in to give him a kiss just the way he always reached for them from you.  And when she turned to leave he let go of her hand slowly, one finger at a time, like he wanted to take one with him to remember her by, probably as he was doing the same to you.  Thinking of her as he held your hand.  

You feel sick.

The train is mostly empty at this hour and you lean back in your seat as your phone rings, Izaya's number appearing on the tiny screen.  "Hello?" you answer in the middle of the second ring, eager to have something, anything, take you away from the past.  "Izaya?"

"Oh, good.  I wasn't sure if you were busy or not.  How are you?"

"Fine," you say, then again, more firmly, "Fine.  Good.  How are you?"

"I'm great.  Listen, I think we should break up."

He might've said something after that.  You don't hear it, though.  You don't hear anything but the clacking of the train over the tracks, clack, clack, clack, speeding down a dark tunnel and straight into a future that you aren't ready for.  If there's a reason, you never figure it out, because you're sent reeling around the loop again, back through the last time you did this, the last time you sat in the train and someone broke up with you, and it wasn't you, it wasn't you, it wasn't your fault, so why did you feel so bad?  You stop hearing Izaya's voice, and all you hear is your ex, all you hear is "ice queen," all you hear is the clacking of the train all around you and feel the vertigo of spiraling back through Samsara into the next life and the next station, all identical to the last.

If the walls of Ikebukuro Station could speak, they would tell you that you should haven known better.


	3. Terminal Stop

Your friends, like all other reasonable people in Ikebukuro, have heard of Izaya and have nothing to do with him.  "You were _dating_ him?" Rie, the one who was on the phone with you many a sleepless night just a year ago, says from her spot at the kotatsu.  "Oh my god.   _Oh my god._ "

"I think this is for the best," Michiko soothes, hand on your shoulder, "Really, it is."

"Just let him go, okay?  Let it go."

Despite everything you've been told about Izaya Orihara, they almost sound more concerned for him than for you.  Maybe you're imagining things.  

Then again, it feels familiar.  You seem to remember them using a similar tone when you broke up with your last boyfriend, too, and called in tears.  "Let it go," Rie had said then, too, like you weren't trying already.  They look at you warily when you go home, as though some of his reputation has rubbed off on you.

*

You love him, and really, that's a shame.  Who?  You don't know; one of them, one of those smooth-talking, dark-haired, sharp-dressing, older men.  What is it with you and older men?  What is it with you and falling in love with people who will never love you back?  He has always been leading you along, just a few steps ahead, a hair's breadth out of reach.  You swipe out to reach him and you feel nothing but the wind between your fingers as he dances away from you.  You don't know why you kept reaching, but you did.  You tried for so long, held on so hard.  But you always failed, always held onto nothing at all.

At the station, the one you know, where you said "hello," "goodbye," "it's over," where you met somebody, you're not sure who, he's waiting on the bench, beckoning with one crooked finger and his perpetual smile.  You are suddenly hungry, starving, maybe, the emptiness in the pit of your stomach opening into a great void, and you swallow the bait whole and are reeled in for more.  It may have been an intimate moment if you were anyone else in the world; you crawl into his lap, press your body to his and cup his face in your hands.  He loves it, he pushes back with his hips and kisses your neck and pulls at your clothes.

"Why can't it be like this all the time?" he asks against your skin, a hand on your hip, "Why did you have to be such an ice queen?"

A fire cracker goes off inside your head, all screaming noise and searing heat, red behind the eyes, and your hands slide naturally from his face to his neck, hard enough to bruise and cut off his air.  He fights you, tries to buck you off and sit up and struggle, but you're stronger now.  "An ice queen?" you hiss, "An ice queen!  You always, always, always,  _always_ say that!  I'm an ice queen.  I'm a cold, unfeeling, robot of a girlfriend.  I can figure distance and velocity and reach the top of the rankings, but I have no  _fucking_ clue in the bedroom, right?  Say it again.  Tell me I'm an ice queen.  Say it!"

He doesn't say anything.  You squeeze harder, no inclination to move despite his hands on your wrists and the pleading look in his eyes when they aren't wrenched shut.  You know he wants to breathe and you know you don't want to give him what he wants ever again.  Your hands fit around his neck perfectly, like this moment was meant to happen.  

And maybe it has happened.  You feel like you've done all this before, felt the high of choking the life out of him, felt the satisfaction of his nails scraping your wrists and watched his eyes flutter shut.  There's a deep rumble in the tunnels as the train whizzes behind you, and clack, clack, clack, go the tracks, clack, clack, CLATTER.

Except there is no train.

No, there is no train, even though there was one last time.  The A-line ran last time this happened, but not today.  Clack, clack, clatter goes your phone to the floor, spinning in circles in a futile attempt to remind you that it's six o'clock and time to make dinner.  Your hands fall limply to your sides and he gasps, trying to suck air into his burning lungs while laughing.  He's laughing.  You can't figure that one out.

"Oh, darling," he breathes, "You really do love me."

You almost strangled your boyfriend to death.

Again.

You're confused, certain that you need to go somewhere far away and never come back, but Izaya pulls at your wrists, gently this time, until you're laying against his chest.  There is nothing sexual about this contact and it's almost comforting.  You bury your face into his jacket and hold onto it like you're drowning as big, salty tears roll down your cheeks.

You're in a struggle to separate past and present, order and chaos, the urge to love and the urge to destroy, but he doesn't let go.  You are clinging to him--again?  For the first time?--when you whimper, "Please, love me," and for once, he doesn't laugh but only holds you closer.

You love him, and that's really too bad.

*

Against your better judgment, you end up going home with Izaya, where he makes tea and dances around his kitchen all the while humming an indistinct tune that you don't recognize.  "I was starting to worry that you didn't really like me all that much," he says as he comes to sit next to you on the couch, a tray with a kettle and two cups in his hand, "Please, drink some.  You're freezing."  You can't stop looking at the butterfly-shaped mark on his neck.

"Izaya," you say, pausing to take a cup from him, "I just tried to kill you."

"It was incredible.  You were too normal, I knew you had to have some kind of secret.  Your love can't be handled by a mere human, my dear, so you're fortunate that I am anything but.  I'll gladly accept your love."

"No," you say shakily, getting to your feet only for Izaya to pull you back down by the wrist and take the tea from you.  "No, Izaya, there's something wrong with me.  Normal people don't do things like that."

"I love all humans," Izaya says, cupping your face in his hands, "But the normal ones just aren't as interesting.  I know a god shouldn't play favorites, but I just can't help myself."

"I need help."

"No, you need someone who knows how to appreciate you.  You're lucky, there's one in this room."

"You're not listening to me."

"I'll give you a hint; he's handsome, cunning, and you tried to kill him half an hour ago."  You give up.  "You don't even want to guess?  That's okay, you'll figure it out in a little while, I'm sure."  He rubs circles on your back.  "I knew all about you before I even approached you," he says, "About your last boyfriend and everything.  That was your ultimate act of love, wasn't it?  He just didn't understand."

You think _he_ doesn't understand, but you're still reeling from remembering that you even did something like that in the first place—and then did it again—and you don't bother to correct him.

"I just want to be loved," you say helplessly.

Izaya's forehead touches yours.  "You have it," he says, "You have it right here.  Are you going to turn me down?"  He knows you won't, and you know you won't.  You can't help but wish things would have ended differently, but maybe this is the only option left to you now, one where you find someone who is everything you try to hide about yourself.

Izaya is just like you, and that scares you.  And yet, you know there's no one else in the world who would hold you when you tried to kill them just thirty minutes earlier.  So maybe, Samsara does have an end somewhere, and maybe this is it.  Enlightenment, the last link in the chain of being, Nirvana and Bhava-agra all rolled into one man who treats death threats as terms of endearment.  

There's nowhere else you could—or would—rather be.  So you tell Izaya that you won't turn him down.

You have no way of knowing what awaits you in the coming days, months, or years, but at least you know you've escaped Samsara.  This day is not a year ago, and this person is not your ex.  Izaya smiles at you, and that's not so remarkable, because he's always smiling.

He has always smiled at you, and finally, it fills you with nothing but a sense of belonging.


End file.
